Serendipity
by greyslostwho
Summary: H/N. That happy fluffy AU I promised you all, based on the horrible spoilers on Harry leaving. Oneshot.


**SERENDIPITY**

**Decidedly very H/N. What should be happening with the sudden revelation that Harry's leaving, rather than what the SW writers are actually giving us. Because I promised you all a cheerful, fluffy AU after I made you all suffer through Realisation. What's not going to, but absolutely should happen.**

**I don't anything, nothing belongs to me. **

**Spoilers for everything that's aired.**

She turns up on his doorstep that night; he leaves for New York in the morning; and if she's honest with herself, the five or six glasses of Pinot Noir are part of what's convinced her at eleven o'clock at night, the night before he leaves, getting a taxi to Harry's is exactly what she needs to do. She sighs, in a way it's slightly in disapproval of what she's doing, but she knocks his door anyway – there's enough alcohol in her system to blur everything, she wouldn't be doing this, she wouldn't be here right now if she was in a completely sober state. She'd never had the guts.

He opens the door, and he's in his pyjamas and rubbing sleep from his eyes, and any other night she'd have felt apologetic, she'd have felt a little sorry for waking him up, she'd have felt guilty. Not tonight.

"Can I come in?" she asks him outright, and he creases his eyebrows in a slight frown, as if he's trying to work out what on earth she might be doing here, but he steps back and lets her in anyway. She considers briefly that maybe his judgement's still being affected by being half-awake, but she only thinks about it for a second. She takes a step in, but almost instantly she's wishing she hadn't been so quick. Because when the door closes behind her, she's got no reason why she shouldn't say what she's come here to say anymore, and despite the wine, she's not sure she's got the guts. She's got so many truths to tell him, she's going to brutally reveal things she's spent the last eight years pretending to herself aren't there, and there's still part of her that would rather keep pretending they don't exist. Because everything would be so much easier.

"What's wrong?" he asks, and his voice still sounds slightly immersed in sleep, but he's looking more awake than he was moments ago, and she just can't hold back any longer, she can't keep making excuses to not say things. She's been doing that for years.

She swallows, looks up at him, and he notices something different about her face, her eyes, in those seconds. There seems to be more honesty there than there's ever been, there's something almost _raw_ about her stare in that moment.

"You shouldn't leave me." She says, biting her lip, as if she's nervous, and in reality she doesn't have a clue whether she's going to get a result from this honesty, at all. "You've been my best friend all these years, and everyone leaves me… you shouldn't make me love you, and then just leave me, Harry!" She's started shouting a few words into the sentence, and she's so worked up, and a little intoxicated, she hasn't even noticed the revelation she's just given him. Her words fall flat on silence, purely because Harry has absolutely no idea what to answer that with, and they stare at each other for a moment.

There's at least 30 seconds of silence until the words she's just said replay in her head, and she claps a hand to her mouth in shock, turning almost instantly as white as a sheet, and looking literally quite ill in front of him.

He takes a slow, silent step towards her, but she cowers back a little bit, as if she doesn't want him to touch her, not for a moment, as if that will make everything that's happening in these moments real. He backs her against the wall, however, and after a moment's consideration, puts his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eyes; as it is, exactly where she'd rather not look right now, after those words that escaped her mouth against her judgement.

He opens his mouth, as if he's about to say something, but closes it again, as if he's thought better of it.

She bites the bullet, and she just starts talking.

"You must have known…" she near-whispers, "There were so many signs I couldn't hide…"

He runs over the last eight years of his life in seconds then, and he supposes, now he knows the truth, he could have worked out how she felt about him from all those signs she's talking about, but he's been too engrossed in worrying about his own unrequited feelings…

_Worrying about his own unrequited feelings…_

There's something wrong with that, isn't there? And when he thinks about it, she should have known how he felt about her too, she should have been able to read it, he left so many signs as well. Hell, there'd been too many chances they hadn't taken in the last few years.

"I love you too." He breathes, and she's not sure how to read his tone, he almost sounds like he's just realising it himself, but she doesn't have time to think, because his mouth is descending on hers, and once their lips are together, there's no more room for thinking.

Things are hot and heavy, quick and messy, because there's so many feelings involved, and they've both been waiting for this for so long… they've both been dreaming about this, they've both got their own ideas of exactly what should happen – and of course it's going to be like neither of them imagined, it's going to be chaotic, it's going to be emotional. They wouldn't be Harry and Nikki if it wasn't.

* * *

They don't make it to Harry's bed the first time, and after that they think that the bed needs a go as well, so it's a couple of hours in the end before Nikki collapses on his chest, hardly able to breathe, absolutely exhausted and overwhelmed at the same time – she doesn't think she's got another memory to rival how _good_ that just was, and he's worn her out no end, and then, suddenly, in her now more sober state, she's remembering why she turned up in the first place, what's happening at a more sociable hour of the morning, what triggered this in the first place.

She bursts into tears, because that seems like the only possibility right now.

Harry rolls over, rubbing his eyes – he'd been about to fall into sleep so ludicrously quickly when they fell, side by side.

"Dear God, it wasn't that bad, was it?" he jokes, and mentally kicks himself in the seconds afterwards for making a joke right now – he does that too often, and now really isn't the time. But as it is, Harry's faults are the things Nikki loves the most, and she lets out a little laugh between her fits of tears, a smile touches her lips for a few seconds.

"You're going to New York in the morning." She whispers, swallowing slowly, trying to grit her teeth and bear it, as she's always done, throughout her life, but there's something too huge, too devastating about this. "…and I'm gonna miss you all the more now…"

There's silence again as he takes her words in – they're getting good at that, merely considering each other in silence for moments – and then he sits up, looking down at her, cocking his head slightly on the side, as if seeing her from a different angle would make a difference in what he's just heard. In reality, and this has happened so many times, she knows him the best any person in the world does, and still, sometimes, she gets what he's about to do completely wrong.

"Nikki…" he hoists her up, and she looks slightly concerned, almost like a schoolgirl in the corner, about to be told off. Almost as if she's nervous of what he's about to say. "Nikki, I…" he trails off, shaking his head a little, "Dyou really think I'm still going, after all this?"

She doesn't have anything to say to that, her mouth's open in shock, and she has a slightly glazed expression, waiting for the realisation that this isn't happening, or waiting to wake up from her dream.

He smiles at her, and takes both her hands, both of them, sat opposite each other in his bed, wrapped in the linen. "Nikki, I've loved you since… bloody hell, I don't even know how long I've loved you… but a long time… and I guess… I guess I was too busy worrying about how in love with you I was - and I thought it was unrequited love – to notice that you were in love with me, too… and I think… I guess you did the same…"

She opens her mouth to say something, but he puts his finger up to her lips, stopping her. "Wait… I got the offer from New York, and I've been thinking for years that I need to get over you, you clearly don't love me back… and I decided to just cut all the cords tying me here, tying me to you, and leave… I figured maybe that was the only way to get over you…"

He lets her speak, then. "You were going, because of me?"

He shrugs, thinking how ridiculous it sounds, right here, right now, with her naked in his bed. "I was going, to get over you."

For the next words, her voice is tiny. He can hardly hear it. "And you're not going, now?"

He gives her a massive smile then, and kisses her chastely before he replies. He shakes his head, "I'm not going, not now. Dear God, Nikki, I love you… and to think… that you might love me too…"

There's a tear, running down her cheek, but he knows it's not the same kind of tears he'd evoked in her before, and he pulls her into his arms and buries his head in her head. "…there's so many reasons for me to be here, now." He kisses her parting lightly, and she raises her face to his. "…so many things that we're going to do together, now…" he laughs slightly, "If that's alright with you, of course?"

She shakes her head at him, her eyes shining almost with some kind of new light. "Absolutely." She breathes, "I love you, Harry. I think… shut me up, if this is too much, too soon… I've waited for you, so long, I think you could have a good chance at being my forever…"

He leans in to kiss her quickly then, he doesn't want her to see the tears in his eyes, and within moments they're both aroused, and it's like a heavenly repeating cycle, they're going again.

* * *

The sunlight's coming through the curtains when they finally lay in each other's arms, and Nikki's breathing has slowed… she's fallen asleep. Harry kisses her on the forehead, smiles, and wraps his arms around her before closing his eyes, letting the much-needed sleep begin to take over.

He has one thought, as he drifts out of consciousness.

_She really might be my forever, and to think, I almost lost her…_

**A review would be lovely! I don't think this is that great, could definitely be better, I'm just not very literate when I'm thinking about H/N, which is now my sunken ship!**

**Apologies for the massive fluff overload at the end **


End file.
